Until September December 1st 2010, we're giving away Phone Disk to everyone for free! If you unlock the software before that date, you get free upgrades and can enjoy the full version of the software on that computer with no expiration (just make sure you enter the code before December 1st)!

Use the following registration code to unlock the full version Phone Disk: 2H96A-QK7MX-8GEYK1V-ZR6S8

iPad, iTouch or iPhone Disk Mode is made easy with Phone Disk. Using your standard USB cable, this tiny program runs in the menu bar or system tray of your Mac or PC. When it finds an iPod Touch or iPhone it seamlessly mounts it to your file system so you can directly access its files using Windows Explorer, Finder and every other program.

Just to note, that this product DOES require iTunes 9 to be installed. Not saying that to disparage the product, just to let people know. If it works as advertised it's still a useful upgrade to PC/iPod functionality.

iPad, iTouch or iPhone Disk Mode is made easy with Phone Disk. Using your standard USB cable, this tiny program runs in the menu bar or system tray of your Mac or PC. When it finds an iPod Touch or iPhone it seamlessly mounts it to your file system so you can directly access its files using Windows Explorer, Finder and every other program.

I think Windows XP and 7 auto find what you plug into it.Maybe even iStuff, certainly everything else, if the driver is there.And it usually is.

My point is this is a special program to do what it should do any way.It's all iSomething, these devices should be that smart.

The real advantage provided by programs of this nature is the ability to explore the device's storage from within Windows Explorer/the finder rather than ONLY through iTunes. Ironically, I returned my iPod Touch 4th gen yesterday because I can't stand iTunes. As it happens, this product would not really have helped me due to the requirement that iTunes 9 be installed on the computer... As far as I know, with the Touch and the iPhone, there is no way around having iTunes installed.

I think I might get a Windows 7 Phone, after I've had a chance to play with one, of course. Failing that, an Android phone (probably HTC unless I switch to Rogers, in which case it'll be a Samsung Galaxy S). My wife leaves for South Korea on Tuesday, I'm also tempted to ask her to get me a Samsung PMP. However, they're releasing some new stuff in the coming months, so if I go that route, it probably makes sense to wait until she goes in January. My main requirement/desire is that whatever I get sync with Outlook so that I can have calendaring and scheduling features "on the go".

BTW - I really LIKED the iPod Touch. My only complaint about IT was that I didn't find scrolling through the apps very intuitive... Overall, I returned it because of iTunes. The iPhone is out for the same reason.

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, the iPod as such is great. But iTunes is a whole other story. It feels like an app from another era, patched and fixed and re-fixed and then with some pieces attached here and there... It's clunky, slow etc. Unfortunately, if you need to sync stuff with Outlook, there's no way out of iTunes.

[OT] update to my answer to Armando's question about what I'm going to buy instead:

I'm also monitoring this soon to be released tablet from Archos. This one is already available, but I'm holding out for the bigger, capacitive* display of the4.3. I'm a bit underwhelmed by Archos' hardware quality compared to Apple, but so far my hands on experience has been a $100 8GB mp3 player compared to a $320 iPod Touch. I'm sure that the tablet will be made to higher specs.

Overall, I think I am more likely to go with a Windows 7 phone, though. I'll just have to wait and see.

*I've read conflicting reports about whether or not the display in the 4.3t is going to be capacitive or not... [/OT]

There's nothing inherently evil about java. Google is a different subject. But is Google more or less evil than Microsoft? Maybe. There's room for a (sterile) debate.

1- Android is open source, the "other" isn't. I'm not saying open source is necessarily better than closed source... Just saying... Only, it could be an interesting element to consider when building and argument list to speculate on evilness.

2- For Android, you can develop apps using the very powerful and free IDE Eclipse. For windows you'll most probably need to use the rather expensive Visual Studio to develop applications. Unless you want to use the free one... Which is good enough I suppose. Pick your poison.

3- Android will probably be adopted by more companies as there are less restrictions, more freedom. I suspect that it'll become "bigger" than the mobile Windows/Apple OS. I might be completely wrong though.

Ultimately, I must say I hope for the world that Apple won't win the battle and that the 3 systems will co-exist for a long time to come... For the sake of healthy competition, "DRM hell + pay for every single software update" softening.

My emphasis on a windows 7 phone is mostly because I anticipate it to have excellent inter-operability with my Windows 7 notebook computer and Office 2010 apps... I'm pretty drawn to Android phones, though... I'm going to wait until the Win7 phones are out here so that I can compare.

WRT the Archos 3cam Vision... it DEFINITELY does not compare to the iPod Touch in either quality or features. I bought one for my 8 year old son (I don't want him to have internet access for a while yet) and so far I've been impressed with it as a media player, though. Even the reactive touchscreen isn't too bad.